The Great Mosque of Cordoba extended and revised architectural review

When the Umayyad were supplanted by the Abbasids in 750 and the centre of Islam relocated from Damascus, Syria to Baghdad, Iraq, a Umayyad prince named Abed Al-Rahman I moved to Spain where Muslims were already established & founded a dynasty with Cordoba as its capital. The kingdom flourished, lasting for nearly 300 years (756-1031). In 929 a restored Umayyad caliphate was set up in Cordoba, in rivalry with the Abbasids in Baghdad: by any standard, Cordoba was the richest, most sophisticated city in Europe.

The Great Mosque of Cordoba's original construction under Abed Al-Rahman I - Part 1
The Great Mosque of Cordoba's original construction under Abed Al-Rahman I - Part 2
The first mosque extension under Abed Al-Rahman II
Building work on the Great Mosque of Cordoba by Abed AI-Rahman III
The extension under al-Hakam II
The last extension under Al-Mansor
The Great Mosque Of Cordoba's Pictures

The first mosque extension under Abed Al-Rahman II.

Due to the city's increasing population, Abed al-Rahman II ordered the Great Mosque of Cordoba to be extended over the years 833-848 - which resulted mainly in the prayer hall being enlarged to the south. As work progressed, the mihrab was demolished, and the masonry of the qibla wall removed, so that eight more bays could be added in an extension to the original building, com­prising 11 aisles and 12 bays; as a result, the prayer hall covered a nearly square area of79.29 x 69.09 meters (260 x 227 feet).

Here, we should also mention the capitals, exhaustively examined by Chris­tian Ewert and Patrice Cressier. According to them, not only Roman and Visig­othic, but now also Islamic capitals are apparent. These embody a new form, that, in keeping with their epoch, we shall call "emirate period" capitals. Just as with all medieval capitals, those of the emirate period are based on the classical Corinthian type, distinguished by subtle ornamentation that leads one to conclude deep chiseling. One can also detect a search for new forms and expres­sive possibilities, resulting in a formal richness almost unique to this period. Nor is the distribution of these capitals here arbitrary. The central aisle and last bay before the no longer visible Qibla wall contain the best capitals - though the 16th-century constructions of the cathedral and its buttresses have greatly impaired their visibility.

Within the original building's center aisle, the area of the mihrab is given great emphasis. Whereas the prayer hall normally has the usual red and black alternating marble columns, in the central aisle directly in front of the mihrab, two white, chamfered marble columns have been placed. Moreover, the columns in the last bay of arcades, ending immediately before the Qibla wall, are adorned with especially splendid capitals. Together with the mosque's central axis, oriented on the mihrab, this emphatically lateral Qibla wall, indicating the direc­tion of prayers, forms the shape of a "T" - which explains why commentators refer to it as a "T-type" here.

Building work on the Great Mosque of Cordoba by Abed AI-Rahman III

When Abed al-Rahman III proclaimed himself caliph in 929, he was mainly interested in the palace city, Medina al-Zahra (built 936-1010) which is only 8 miles (13 kilometers) northwest of Cordoba, and which he founded as his empires administrative and government headquarters in 936. Preoccupied by supervising building work in Medina al-Zahra, the caliph undertook only rela­tively unimportant work on the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Thus, he mainly enlarged the mosque's courtyard, which also meant extending the women's gal­leries. Moreover, Abed al-Rahman III demolished Hisham I's minaret, which no longer fulfilled its purpose, and presumably, now failed to meet the community's needs, and built a new minaret. Abed aI-Rahman Ill's minaret was built on the courtyard's southern side.

Today it no longer exists, for in the 16th century the cathedral's bell tower was erected in its place, and in the 17th century this acquired a Baroque tower. We get a view of Abed al- Rahman Ill's caliphate period minaret in a 16th-century relief emblem found outside on the Great Mosque's eastern facade, where it adorns a spandrel on the mosque courtyard's eastern entrance portal. The minaret stood on a square surface and comprised two build­ing structures. The lower structure was cubic, and about 75 feet (23 meters) high. The upper structure was shorter and narrower and was used for the muezzin summoning the faithful to prayer. Atop this was a little dome with an arched opening on either side. Al-Maqqari (d.1631), a text compiler from the Maghreb, saw the original minaret. He memorably describes the minaret's sum­mit (yamur) as a vertical pole on which two golden and one silver balls were balanced, a small pomegranate crowning them.